The UK is facing a housing shortage. One of the obstacles to this is with land purchased by developers but sitting idle. A report, focusing on England, recommends the government considers measures to force developers to build, or face sanctions.
The report comes from the think tank, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), has looked into England’s planning system. This review finds that the British government needs to tackle unproductive land speculation and also to ramp up strategic planning capability, if it wants to meet its housebuilding targets.
IPPR is an independent charity working towards a fairer, greener, and more prosperous society. It is towards the left on the political spectrum.
The analysis finds that developers have secured planning permission for over 1.4 million homes since 2007 but have not gone on to build them. Reasons for this include:
• Developers wanting to increase the land’s value before selling it on.
• Land banking to slow building rates and maintain high house prices.
To go forwards, IPPR recommends strengthening the planning system, to support the delivery of house building while also supporting the government’s missions to restore nature, generate clean energy and build other crucial infrastructure.
To meet this goal there is a need to increase capacity and funding for local planning teams, who have been increasingly strained since the previous Conservative government’s austerity years.
The think tank recommends:
• Exploring new laws to force developers to build within a certain time frame of securing planning permission, or face sanctions.
• Creating a new Cabinet Office team to produce a national spatial strategy to oversee land use.
• Tackling blockers to development at source by ensuring monitoring and enforcement is appropriately resourced.
Commenting on the report, Dr Maya Singer Hobbs, senior research fellow at IPPR, states: “The government doesn’t need to rip up the planning system to build 1.5 million new homes. Many of the blockers to housing and infrastructure delivery are not planning related. Reasons include water shortages, private developers slowing delivery to maintain profits, and a lack of strategic oversight of large infrastructure projects.”
She adds: “Market driven house-building is broken, and won’t deliver the 1.5 million homes the government has promised.”
The fault is with previous administrations: “Years of deregulation and cuts to organisations like the Environment Agency means the planning system now operates as the last bastion of defence against bad design, nature degradation, pollution and over extraction of our waterways. We must support local, regional and national planners to do their job.”
